Production Crew

The highlight of the year so far was of course the shooting. We thank everyone who helped out, there are so many as with any production of this scale. 

We managed to pull together a great team in the couple of weeks before shooting. I will go through the main players, excluding the four man college team. 

As AD we got Dominique Brennan, a graduate from  Video and Film a couple of years ago. Myself and Niall had worked extensively with Dom before, so we knew she had extensive skills in management and organisation so although I had never seen her in the AD role before, I knew she would be great. And she was; as with any great AD, without her the film would have collapsed! She ran the set like a proper AD should, things happened on time and everyone had their role and jobs to do.

As gaffer we had Adam Heapez, another ex-BAVF head. A joy to work with, I found I could communicate light setups with him quickly and, crucially, trust him to set up at a second location while I shot at the first. He also stepped in on sound when Andrew couldn’t make it; an invaluable second skill. Adam was the only skilled crew member other than the 4-man college group and Dom that was on set all day every day for the whole shoot. All for a measly box of Roses!

On sound (most of the time anyway) was Andrew Grafton, a DkIT music graduate who did the postproduction audio on the last two DkIT films to get into Galway. He was a friend of Jamie’s and greatly skilled audio guy. Not an experienced boom op, he is a successful musician, an experienced sound engineer. All that was more than good enough. A soldier and a very busy guy, he is also taking care of the post audio for us, which is such a bonus to have him on boom as he knew on set what was usable and recorded lots of opportunistic extra stuff for the hyper-real sound design Jamie wants.

I was adamant that each camera-op have a dedicated camera assistant. When shooting with DSLR, the camera assistant has so much more to do between lens changes and assisting with rigging, on top of focus pulling occasionally and running back and forth with cards and batteries. The camera assists were also responsible for logging with camera log sheets and clapping. On B Cam we had Alan Markey, a skilled guy I met briefly at the Darklight festival and invited down, and then Patrick Clarke, a local photographer who supplied a 5D, who was a friend of Jamie's. As camera assist, I had Odhrain Soanes, another ex-DkIT film head, who was fantastic to work with and Rob Siberry who I worked with on Black Ice, a Still Films co-production in Sligo-Leitrim in which he was the DP’s camera assist.

We had so many more crew in terms of skilled crew who stepped in for a day or two when the other guys could not make it and all the unskilled production assistants and runners, that I could write about all night but I’m guessing you have stopped reading by now so I wont! All in all though, it was one of the most professional sets I’ve ever been on and it paid off as the results show.